You can't blame Matt Carle for taking the money – six years, $33 million.

The Flyers could have overspent, as they do so often with so many players. But they put all focus last summer on Shea Weber. Then Ryan Suter. And then Zach Parise.

And they really had no true back-up plan on defense once Nashville matched the Flyers' offer sheet for Weber, and Suter signed in Minnesota along with Parise.

Nashville matched the Flyers' 14-year, $110 million offer on July 24 – 23 days after Suter and Parise turned down the Flyers' identical 12-year, $100 million offers.

All the while, one of the most underappreciated athletes Philadelphia has ever had hung around hoping to get an offer, but it never came.

Did he feel unappreciated by the club, let alone the fans?

"No," Carle said on Sunday night. "I played a lot and had a great relationship with the guys and the coaching staff. Everybody there. In the end, things didn't work out. There really is no one to blame. Hockey is a business at times. So, here we are."

You don't want to blame Parise and Suter for holding up the process in free agency last summer, Matt?

"It was kind of weird, I guess, that whole process," he said. "I don't blame those guys for taking their time. The amount of offers they were probably getting, the length of those offers, you want to make sure – a dozen or 13 years – be sure where you are going and those guys took their time. I was fine to sit in the weeds and do my homework on different organizations, and it allowed me the time to make a good decision, as well."

Carle is living happily ever after here in Tampa. The Flyers won't admit it, but they miss his fluid skating and his one-touch pass out of the zone.